Friday, October 16, 2009

The Great Mathematician-Dr.Childs' Quotes

Dr.Childs was my first year first semester Calculus lecturer. I liked him a lot, because he was hilarious and I (in fact all students who were in his class) could never get bored in his class. Here are some of his famous quotes:

September nth, 2008: - "Normally I don't mind when cellphones go off during class, but there was this one time I was teaching when someone's phone went off... And he answered it! I ignored him and went on, because it didn't bother me, but I could see that people around him were starting to get frustrated. So I asked him if he would get off the phone. Do you know what he did!? He looked up and said '*hand motions* Hang on'. So I walked down the aisle and went up to him, told him to get off the phone. And he didn't! Know what I did? I beat the crap out of him! So now whenever a cellphone goes off during class, I get excited. I want someone to answer it."

September n(+/-)xth, 2008: - "I encourage you guys to ask questions, I mean, the worst that can happen is you'll ask a stupid question and the class will laugh at you. If it's bad, you'll get beat up after class. If it's really bad, I'll beat you up."

October 5th, 2008: - "1661-1704...what a lot of people don't know is that I'm related to L'Hopital! Actually...he was my dad." - "We didn't call it L'Hopital's Rule back then. We just called it my dad's rule." - "We would just stay up all night taking limits to infinity...and we'd never get bored!" - "You must think I'm really old then, but I look a lot younger than I am. That's because I use Oil of Olay."

October 21st, 2008: - "With Newton's Law of Cooling, you don't have to keep going to the fridge to see if your pop is exactly 50 degrees! You can just check after ten minutes, then use the formula and know exactly when it will be ready! Think of all the extra math work you can do now that you don't have to keep checking your pop!"

November nth, 2008: - "What a lot of people don't know is that I'm actually related to Gauss. Actually, I am Gauss!"

November n+xth, 2008: - "This is something you'll learn that actually has a practical application. Let's say you're walking down the street, and a wealthy businessman walks up to you and says, if you can tell me what e to the one tenth accurate to five places is, I will give 500 dollars. It happens to me all the time! How do you think I got so rich?"

November n+yth, 2008: - "You shouldn't draw a small theta with a thick marker like this one. It looks like...it kind of looks like a planet."

January 8th, 2009: - "Now how do you know if you made the right choice for u and du? The answer is: You don't!" - "Really, you SHOULD complain about this. You should complain to the Math department. You should complain to the Associate Dean of Engineering. Just... don't tell them that I told you to complain."

January 13th, 2009: - "See, it's like a cup. But you can't drink out of it. Because it's made of ink." - "Think of it like a flat donut. Except you can't eat it. 'Cause it's made of ink!" - "This one's just like the cup, but it has a hole in the bottom. So you couldn't drink out of it, even if it WASN'T made out of ink."

January 14th, 2009: - "When I taught my Social Science students these things, I'd put a question like this up on the board, and you know what they'd do? They'd stare at it for an hour and then drop the course!"

January 15th, 2009: - "How will you know that this can be integrated? You can't! Only after doing hundreds and hundreds of integrals will you be able to look at this and know it has an answer."

January 26th, 2009: - The return of: p-series, convergence and divergence, indeterminate forms, and of course, L'Hopital's Rule. I was a little nervous when it came out...I semi-expected him to mention this group and call out its members or something. I have a feeling he knows it exists.

January 28th, 2009: - "Did you guys know there's a test tomorrow?"

January 29th, 2009: - "So, have you guys started studying yet?"

February 3rd, 2009: - "And this is approximately 6.034... Now, you guys probably think that I just got that out of the book, but that's not true. I did that in my head. I'm a human calculator! You may not believe me, because I checked the book before I wrote down the answer, but see... I was only checking to make sure the BOOK got it right." - "So this makes it an even BIGGER constant!"

February 11th, 2009: - "So we write '2% of customers to wait more than a minutes'...this is actually terrible notation, because if I just take the 's' off, it'll say '2% of customers to wait more than a minute', which isn't what we want. I'm gonna change this to 'b' minutes." - "Did you guys get all these questions? I did. I'm really good at this stuff."

February 13th, 2009: Responses to "What are the applications of this [polar coordinates]?": - "Well, there are two applications for this. One, it'll be on your test. But the most important application of this is that it'll show up on your final." - "When you end up graduating university, and you end up teaching this stuff..." - "You see, in high school when you asked what the applications of what you're learning is, they tell you you'll use it in university. When you get to first year and you ask again, they tell you you'll use it in second year. When you get to second year and ask about the applications, they tell you you'll use it in fourth-year math. When you finish your fourth year and you finally graduate, that's when you realize...you've been conned! This stuff is actually all useless!"

February 24th, 2009: - "So I could have the review Thursday so you guys can skip that and fail -this- test, or I could have the review on Friday, you guys can skip tomorrow's lecture, and fail the next test! Let's take a vote." March 10th, 2009: - "If you guys thought integrals were fun, double integrals are twice as fun!"